Pride

I’m trying to finish the book I’m currently reading before I begin mountains of required (or recommended) reading for various classes…  In the course of my reading, I read the following:

“Humility renders the person immune to anger and incapable of making anyone else angry…(the humble person) criticizes no one and refuses to blame others as the cause of whatever problems he may face.  For this reason his mind is perfectly at peace.”

ouch…Not that I consider myself a humble person–I’m usually the first to admit that within me resides an immense capacity for pride.  Yet, this evening, as I read those words, I realized that even my admittance of my pride has, at its source, prideful intentions.  It’s a sort of false humility–this idea that I am SOOO prideful…look at me, admitting my sins, thinking I’m so sinful.

–I don’t.

Work has been stressful lately.  And I’m realizing that it’s my own fault.  Deep down, I’ve always realized that.  But it’s so much easier to blame it on  others.  To say, “Well, if THEY wouldn’t come in with this self-righteous attitude and try to take over, things would be better.”  …they wouldn’t.  And then…I sat across the table with my boss the other day, after explaining to him my frustrations, and listening to his reply.  He appealed to my pride.  It felt good, and wrong, all at the same time.  To hear his praises…to listen to him feed my ego…It felt great initially.  But when the conversation was over, I was left with this pit in my stomach–the emptiness and sorrow that comes from realizing that I am ruled by pride.  That I am easily satiated by feeding my ego–the very thing I should try hard to starve.

…the aestetical practices of Orthodoxy look better and better to me.  And the better they look, the more I realize that it would be a struggle.  A very large struggle.  I am beginning to understand a friend’s explaination for converting–he needed the structure & the routines…

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Being…

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to write.  I’ve continued to read Merton’s “No Man is an Island” and it’s been percolating as I’ve spent the past week re-learning how to relax with family.  Merton talks a lot about being real to oneself.  God has created each person with a different personality, and a different purpose…a different vocation.  We can’t do anything else until we know who we are and are true to ourselves, as God has intended.  So often, though, we don’t know who we are.  We think we do, but we deceive ourselves so easily.  So often we let others’ expectations (real or imagined) define who we become, covering our true selves with so many personas it’s almost impossible to find our true self.

I have several thoughts about this floating around in my head, but I’ve not quite figured out how to verbalize it… nor do I trust my ability to discern what should be posted, and what written in ink and tucked away for no one else to read.  Some things are better left unsaid.  And yet, the writer in me desperately wants to find a way to say whatever it is that’s floating around in there…  We’ll see. 

“I cannot make good choices unless I develop a mature and prudent conscience that gives me an accurate acount of my motives, my intentions, and my moral acts….The immature conscience is one that bases its judgements partly, or even entirely, on the way other people seem to be disposed toward its decisions.  The Good is what is admired or accepted by the people it lives with.  The evil is what irritates or upsets them.  Even when the immature conscience is not entirely dominated by people outside itself, it nevertheless acts only as a representative of some other conscience.  The immature conscience is not its own master.  It is merely the delegate of the conscience of another person, or of a group…Therefore, it does not make real moral decisions of its own, it simply parrots the decisions of others.  It does not make judgements of its own, it merely “conforms” to the part line.  It does not really have motives or intentions of its own.  Or if it does, it wrecks them by twisting and rationalizing them to fit the intentions of another. That is not moral freedom.  It makes true love impossible.  For If I am to love truly and freel, I must be able to give something that is truly my own to another.  If my heart does not first belong to me, how can I give it to another?  It is not mine to give!”

hard words, Merton, hard words…  I read this passage, and was overwhelmed by the implications of these words.  I have recently realized that I am a “pleaser.”  I like to make people happy.  And oftentimes, my words and actions are not a reflection of me, but rather of who I am directing them towards.  This is not to say that I feel that I am being unfaithful to myself;  if I feel strongly enough, I will stand up and risk making people unhappy.  It is only since this realization have I been able to look at my thoughts, words, and actions, and see where it is I am basing my actions on the perceptions of others.  Perhaps this is the first step?

Yet, perhaps what troubles me most about the implications of this passage stems not from my “pleaser” personality, but from the moral and spiritual development process itself.  Having grown up in a conservative evangelical community, my morals have been basically handed to me:  This is what a good Christian girl believes, does, and does not do.  For the most part, I’ve accepted those morals.  They’ve worked for me thus far.

But Merton implies that this simple acceptance of morality, of conscious (one’s definition of good and evil) hinders one’s ability to love…  I’m not quite sure how he makes the connection, to be honest, but if he’s right…Can anyone love freely?  Even with my years-long quest to understand what I believe, why, and to thoughtfully consider any challenges to those beliefs, I still recognize that at the root of my conscience are the moral foundations laid for me by my parents and conservative evangelical community…  Over the years, I’ve tweaked them as I’ve been challenged to think.  However, the fact remains that there is much I have not questioned, changed, or even challenged…

I don’t know…an interesting thought I should spend more time on, I think…

Pure, unselfish love

Last week, desperate for new reading material, I picked up Thomas Merton’s “No Man is an Island.”  I’ve heard nothing but great things about Merton, and have read a few short essays.  So…what the heck, why not see what else he has to say?  I had quite a selection at my local bookstore, and since I really didn’t know where to start, I did what any girl would do:

I picked the cutest.

However, I have thoroughly reading the contents of my new, cute book.  Merton has a lot to say about love and what brings meaning to our lives.  It’s very, very good. Here’s a few of my favorite quotes so far:

“The spiritual life is the life of man’s real self, the life of that interior self whose flame is so often allowed to be smothered under the ashes of anxiety and futile concern…without a life of the spirit, our whole existance becomes unsubstantial and illusory.”  –as seen in people’s anxious and often meaningless grasping at things that promise to bring them meaning: alcohol, money, friends, sex…(non of which bad, in themselves–just not the solution to the root problem)

“One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another is society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.”

“The discovery of ourselves in God, and of God in ourselves, by a charity that also finds all other men in God with ourselvesis, therefore, not the discovery of ourselves, but of Christ…It is to see theworld in Christ”

“I cannot discover God in myself and myself in Him unless Ihave the courage to face myself exactly as I am, with all my limitations, and to accept others as they are, with all their limitations.  The religious answer is not religious if it is not fully real.”

–I love that:  “The religious answer is not religious if it is not fully real.”  There is a trend among many protestants to differentiate between Christianity as a religion or a “relationship.”  Merton ’s idea of religious combats any falsity in a religion.  hmmm…more thoughts to come, I’m sure. 

More thoughts from Chesterton…

As previously stated, I’m currently reading GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. I read it once in high school, but remembered very little beyond that Chesterton is fully of British sarcasm that made me laugh while making me think deeply about my philosophy on life and religion. And…I have not been disappointed.

Today’s quote: “There is something psychologically Christian about the idea of seeking for the opinion of the obscure rather than taking the obvious course of accepting the opinion of the prominent.”

Think about it. Read it again. seeking for the opinion of the obscure rather than taking the obvious course…

As I read this, I automatically think about the choices that lay before me: counseling or media. I’ve fought with myself constantly on this issue over the course of the past year. I find myself wavering. Yet, as I stand now, I don’t understand why I waver so much. To me, it’s a choice between reality and illusion.

Do I work with real people, with real problems, to find real and lasting answers? Or, do I manipulate images, ideas, and people’s psyche in order to tell or sell them something that is not even real in an eternal sense?

The obscure often find themselves downtrodden and beaten up. As a psychologist, I will seek to uncover the obscure. Mass Media, are channels devoted to listening to the prominent. Despite the current Po Mo trends towards decentralization and grass roots movements, the ultimate goal of mass media, as a whole, is amplify the prominent. To rally humanity behind what it already accepts.

Suddenly, the choice between the two is very clear. Alas, art will remain for me an enjoyable pastime. Rather than try to bolster my own feeble voice, I shall listen to those who feel they have none. Perhaps one day the two will merge. Until then, I shall proceed to give voice to the obscure.